


Jonathan Strange Splits the Infinitive

by meradorm



Category: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-20
Updated: 2016-12-20
Packaged: 2018-09-10 14:24:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8920531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meradorm/pseuds/meradorm
Summary: With catastrophic results.Pinch hit for Yuletide 2016.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GriegPlants](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GriegPlants/gifts).



Mr Norrell, as an honorable man who took his duty as pedagogue very seriously, would never have turned magic against his pupil in order to teach him a lesson - such were the ways of brutes, not gentlemen.

 

However, there was one incident where Strange happened to intrude upon Norrell while forces were at work in his library, and although he solemnly swore to never to allow anything like that to happen again afterwards, in this singular case Mr Norrell decided not to intervene.

 

 

It so happened that on one frigid morning Strange was summoned as usual to Hanover-square for an early breakfast and the pleasure of Mr Norrel's locution, but upon his arrival he found Mr Norrell hunched over in a chair attending to his letters. 

 

This was an activity that Mr Norrell could scarcely bear and he had chosen it, more likely than not, so as to have something to do while waiting for Strange that his mind could quickly put aside. However, on this particular morning he seemed to have received correspondence most distracting, and was clenching a sheaf of paper between two fingers as if the stem of a hot teacup. His other fist was touched disdainfully to his mouth. 

 

Long stretches of cold were known to put Strange out of his humours (perhaps because of certain events that have elsewhere been elucidated upon) and as he strode into the room he said, with a rapier kind of lightness, "Well! Whatever could be wrong on a day like this? To so blithely walk in and see that look of yours makes me feel a - "

 

Mr Norrell's head snapped up. He dropped the sheaf soundlessly to the ground. Whatever Strange had said seemed to have been exactly the wrong thing. Strange deigned to further hold his tongue.

 

Mr Norrell touched his fingertips together, leaned a little bit forward (he was now at risk of falling off the settee), and regarded him with an expressionless face.

 

"Strange," he began. "I think it's time I introduced you to a very special book. A gem of my collection, and my constant companion. Yes, indeed..."

 

Strange's eyebrows raised by an ironical fraction. Mr Norrell rose and drifted into the library like loose snow.

 

"I must say, I'm intrigued," Strange starts. "I - "

 

Mr Norrell opened a cabinet (the door of which banged perilously against the wall), took a slim brown volume out from next to his stationary, and handed it to Strange.

 

"...'Towe's Grammar'," said Strange, thoroughly befuddled.

 

"Page forty-three, please," said Mr Norrell, softly.

 

It had been bookmarked. Mr Norrell had apparently gotten into an argument about this recently.

 

"'A correspondent states as his own usage, and defends, the insertion of an adverb between the sign of the infinitive mood and the verb. He gives as an instance, " _to scientifically illustrate_ " ... oh, _come_ now!"

 

"A plague," said Norrell, his voice getting a little louder, "befouling clear language and precise communications and a habit hazardous to magicians, who must always - "

 

"Ugh," said Strange. He tossed the book on the nearest flat surface.

 

Mr Norrell looked from the ravaged tome to Strange. He fell deathly silent.

 

"In the future," he told Strange, "you will see that I am right."

 

Then he turned and left the library, and as if he had forgot about the incident entirely, resumed the lesson where they had left off last they met.

 

 

 

It is well known that following the resurgence of English magic, a great deal of protective folk charms, sayings, habits, and the like found themselves entering the market. Even educated people of a certain stature could be found asking their nursemaids, with a bit of apprehension, if they happened to have a little curio they could hang above their child's crib at night. Depending on the region (and within urban areas it varied almost street by street) one could find bread charms in Devonshire, the pullet rite popular in the Midlands, or something called Enochian parchment being printed on Paternoster-row. All of them were, without exception, worse than useless. 

 

Of this Jonathan Strange was unaware. He had, in his early days as a magician, dabbled a bit in protective magic. Yet having been unable to find anything really solid about the art, and annoyed by the fact that if it were working properly he'd never notice anything at all, Strange turned his mind to other matters, considering his skill in scrying (and his being one of the only two extant magicians) to be an acceptable stop-gap.

 

With that in mind, Mr Norrell found himself slightly disappointed but unsurprised when, hardly two hours after their parting, Mr Norrell (who was standing anxiously at the window as if awaiting something important) spied Mrs Strange coming up the street, dragging her husband by the ear. 

 

Mr Norrell called for his manservant. Childermass collected the couple at the door and stood to the side, at attention. He and Mr Norrell exchanged a look, and then the magician turned his attention to Mrs Strange.   

 

"How may I help," Mr Norrell began, taking a breath. 

 

Arabella rounded in on him. "Honestly, what is wrong with my husband? The physician told me there was nothing - "

 

" - you called for the physician? - " 

 

" - The physician! My gosh, he's losing all of his hair - " Strange giggled and leaned into his wife. 

 

" - I know, my darling, but I feel it was inappropriate to _tell_ him that - "

 

"Oh, please, Arabella, I lent him my best hat - "

 

"You lent him six."

 

"And every last one of them looked _stunning_!" Strange collapsed on the hall settee and put his feet up on the arm-rest. Norrell turned away from him, as if embarrassed on his behalf, and went for a palm-sized jar of Samarqand porcelain on the mantle-place.

 

"And you told him - "

 

"- I told him - "

 

" - in front of all of my guests - "

 

" - so blithely - "

 

" - that he'd have married earlier if only he had - "

 

Inside the jar was a packed inch of Russian _tchernozem_. Mr Norrell spoke something over it, and, though perhaps there was a draught, coughed thrice.  

 

"...I told him so blithely," echoed Strange, in a rather normal tone of voice. He sat up with something between an expression of anger and a look of wonderment on his face. "To 'so blithely.' As a verb." 

 

"Yes," snapped Mr Norrell. "And imagine what would have happened to you, had you been speaking to a fairy instead!"

 

The silence in the room spoke volumes between the two magicians (and nothing at all to Mrs Strange, who found that the gratefulness she was awash in blotted out her desire to commit at least one murder).

 

"I suppose you've taught me a lesson about choosing my words," said Strange sourly, lowering himself back. "My God, but I've got a headache!"

 

"It will pass."

 

Strange found this so unacceptably cold that he lifted his head and said, "Well. Happy to finally know what's - "

 

Both Norrell and Childermass turned their heads in unison. Strange decided to accept that the elder magician had won this battle. 

 

After calming down Mrs Strange and seeing that Mr Strange had nursed his headache, Mr Norrell saw them to the door. 

 

"Not in the library, please. Not again."

 

"I wish you had managed to find a way to get your point across that didn't involve relieving me of all my friends," Strange complained, though he was really beginning to develop a great amount of respect for this marvelous lesson, and would repeat the story to others multiple times.

 

 "Not _all_ of them, surely?" said Mr Norrell, so quietly as to be speaking to himself. Mr Strange almost hadn't heard. 

 

And then, before Strange could react, with a nod of his head Mr Norrell had Childermass shut the door on the couple, leaving them out in the February fog.


End file.
